- Aug 12, 2012
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We built a chicken coop when we first moved to our farm and decided to resort back to our country ways after being "city slickers" for many years. We owned 6 laying hens, 2 roosters and 6 meat hens. We let them live part-time free-range, where they were in coop (with a medium-large run) during the day while no-one was home, free-roaming while we were and locked in coop only during the nights. Because we are in a high-predator area, we were cautious of leaving them to free-roam while nobody is home. Sadly the coop door wasn't properly latched one night and just so happens the coyotes found their way into the coop and killed all of our beloved chickens.
We had been reluctant to get chickens again because we felt awful having lost the pets we had grown so close to but years later we have decided to fix what errors we made before with the door and welcome chickens back into our yard. This time we are strictly sticking with laying hens and a rooster, we didn't have the heart to kill any of the meat hens which seemed just as cruel because their rate of growth was too great and they could hardly walk being so fat.
Well it has always been a dream of mine to have a couple pet ducks waddle about our yard and splash about in our pond, so I have decided we will welcome two ducklings to the farm! Along with six chicks.
Well here's the conflict. Our coop is built for chickens, with roosts and nesting boxes but this being my first time raising ducks, what needs to be added to make our chicken coop into a duck coop too?
Of course they will get the basics like an outdoor kiddie pool for them, but any other things that I should add to make it a comfy home for both ducks and chickens?
Any tips or information you have for duck newbies or co-habitation would be much appreciated as well!
I also apologize for the unnecessarily long, rambling explanation I gave for my questions!
Thanks for reading!
We had been reluctant to get chickens again because we felt awful having lost the pets we had grown so close to but years later we have decided to fix what errors we made before with the door and welcome chickens back into our yard. This time we are strictly sticking with laying hens and a rooster, we didn't have the heart to kill any of the meat hens which seemed just as cruel because their rate of growth was too great and they could hardly walk being so fat.
Well it has always been a dream of mine to have a couple pet ducks waddle about our yard and splash about in our pond, so I have decided we will welcome two ducklings to the farm! Along with six chicks.
Well here's the conflict. Our coop is built for chickens, with roosts and nesting boxes but this being my first time raising ducks, what needs to be added to make our chicken coop into a duck coop too?
Of course they will get the basics like an outdoor kiddie pool for them, but any other things that I should add to make it a comfy home for both ducks and chickens?
Any tips or information you have for duck newbies or co-habitation would be much appreciated as well!
I also apologize for the unnecessarily long, rambling explanation I gave for my questions!
Thanks for reading!